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Background Not being able to work has negative health, social and financial consequences. Persisting breathlessness is prevalent in working-aged people. Is it associated with lower workforce participation? This study, using the South Australian Health Omnibus, aimed to explore associations between paid workforce participation and persisting breathlessness intensity, and economic impacts on income in people of working age. Methods This cross-sectional study conducted face-to-face interviews with a random sample of adults in South Australia (n = 8916). Questions included key demographic data, workforce participation and the presence and intensity of persisting breathlessness. Data from working-aged respondents (20–65 years of age) were standardised to the census for regression analyses. Work was coded to paid full- or part-time work or ‘other’. Persisting breathlessness (more than three of the last six months) used the modified Medical Research Council breathlessness scale (aggregated to 0, 1, 2–4). Opportunity cost valuations compared annual income foregone by persisting breathlessness severity. Results Of people interviewed, 6,608 were working-aged (49.9% male; 67.5% had post-secondary qualifications; 70.9% were in paid full- or part-time work; and 1.7% had mMRC score 2–4). Workforce participation dropped in working aged people with increasing breathlessness: mMRC 0, 70.6%; mMRC 1, 51.7%; mMRC 2–4, 20.3%. In the regression model, people with the most severe breathlessness were much less likely to work (OR 0.14; 95% CI 0.09, 0.22). Annual income foregone by people with persisting breathlessness was AU$10.7 billion (AU$9.1b for full-time and AU$1.6b for part-time work; range AU$5.9b, AU$49.7b). Conclusion Worsening persisting breathlessness is associated with lower workforce participation with direct financial consequences, greatest for older males.

In 2006, India embarked on an ambitious attempt to fight poverty by attempting to introduce a wage floor in a setting in which many unskilled workers earn less than the minimum wage. The 2005 national rural employment guarantee act (NREGA) creates a justiciable \"right to work\" by promising 100 days of wage employment in every financial year to all rural households whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. In attempting to fight poverty in poor places with weak administrative capabilities, the idea of \"rights\" has often been invoked. This book aims to contribute to the understanding of the efficacy of poor states in fighting poverty using an ambitious rights-based program - the largest antipoverty public employment program in India, and possibly anywhere in the world. The program authors study is India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), which was launched to implement the NREGA. This book presents survey-based estimates for India as a whole as well as results for Bihar. Results for India are based on the 2009-10 national sample survey. Two surveys were carried out in 2009 and 2010 and spanned 150 villages spread across all 38 districts in Bihar. These data are supplemented by qualitative research in six districts to better understand supply-side challenges. A distinctive feature of the methodology is that the authors identify the key counterfactual outcomes of interest - that is, what Bihar Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (BREGS) participants will have done in the absence of the program - by directly asking individual BREGS participants. The advantage of this approach is that it produces an individual-specific estimate of impact - exploiting the information available for each participant - rather than delivering only a mean impact. The authors find compelling evidence that the scheme is reaching relatively poor families. It is important that reform efforts for MGNREGS work on both of these aspects - a stronger, more capable, local administration, plus more effective participation by civil society.

Most American households carry debt, yet we have little understanding of how debt influences health behavior, especially health care seeking. We examined associations between foregone medical care and debt using a population-based sample of 914 southeastern Michigan residents surveyed in the wake of the late-2000s recession. Overall debt and ratios of debt to income and debt to assets were positively associated with foregoing medical or dental care in the past 12 months, even after adjusting for the poorer socioeconomic and health characteristics of those foregoing care and for respondents' household incomes and net worth. These overall associations were driven largely by credit card and medical debt, while housing debt and automobile and student loans were not associated with foregoing care. These results suggest that debt is an understudied aspect of health stratification.

New Wealth for Old Nationsprovides a guide to policy priorities in small or regional economies. It will be of interest to policymakers, students, and scholars seeking avenues to improved growth, greater opportunity, and better governance. Some of the world's leading economists combine their research insights with a discussion of the practicalities of implementing structural reforms. Scotland is the ideal case study: the recent devolution of government in the United Kingdom offers a natural experiment in political economy, one whose lessons apply to almost any small, advanced economy. One fundamental conclusion is that policy can make a big difference to long-term prosperity in small economies open to flows of knowledge, investment, and migrants. Indeed the difficulty in introducing growth-oriented policies lies more in the politics of implementing change than in the theoretical diagnosis. Public sector governance is consequently a key issue in creating a pro-growth consensus. And faster growth must be seen to improve opportunities for the population as a whole. Further, setting out the evidence--as this book does for Scotland--is vital to overcoming entrenched institutional barriers to policy reform. The first chapter is by Jo Armstrong, John McLaren, and the editors; and the subsequent chapters are by Paul Krugman, William Baumol, Edward Glaeser, Paul Hallwood and Ronald MacDonald, James Heckman and Dimitriy Masterov, Heather Joshi and Robert Wright, Nicholas Crafts, and John Bradley.